


I Don't Feel So Well

by sapphire2309



Category: White Collar
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-25
Updated: 2014-09-25
Packaged: 2018-05-24 16:24:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6159535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphire2309/pseuds/sapphire2309
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rachel's thoughts on Neal and Rebecca's first date.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Don't Feel So Well

**Author's Note:**

> For a challenge at gameofcards, for the prompt 'Never Kill A Boy On The First Date' (BtVS episode title - S01E05).  
> Title's from the Vienna Teng song of the same name.  
> I'm sorry, I'm completely blocked for Peter&Neal D: This is a thing I wrote a while back, it's only here for completeness' sake.  
>  **Disclaimer:** White Collar is Jeff Eastin's brainchild. Not mine.  
> 

Never kill a boy on the first date. It’s something of a cardinal rule. Or it should be.

Too bad she didn’t follow it.

She intended to, she would have, if Agent Peter Burke hadn’t showed up in the middle of it. She should have seen it coming – Burke kept an eye on Neal’s anklet when suspicious business was in the air. All thanks to his infallible gut detector, he’d probably say. Whatever it may be, she’d just been provided with the perfect opportunity to turn Neal’s world upside down, place him in an impossible position. Kill him, so to speak.

So she called him Agent Caffrey, and thoroughly enjoyed the series of expressions on his face.

That isn’t normal, she thinks to herself idly, laying on her bed. She shouldn’t get such cruel pleasure out of watching Neal squirm and spin stories and try to protect himself when he’s so hopelessly, horribly exposed. But she does.

It’s not just the fact that he’s going to lose, in the end. It’s how competently, how ably, how desperately he tries to win when the odds are stacked in her favour. It’s how he fights so hard to keep himself safe, to win.

He’s going to lose. He doesn’t know that. She *loves* the feelings that that creates.

She doesn’t feel too well. And that’s her greatest strength. She’s never understood feelings like love, or madness, as she prefers to call it. She can’t logically explain why or how a person could be so fixated on another person that they’d blind themselves to the other’s flaws and want nothing more than their company.

Or maybe she does get it. She’s begun to enjoy the little games she plays with Neal, even more so because he doesn’t know that he’s being played. Logically, then, it’s only another few steps till she begins to claim that she loves him. That should be interesting. It will certainly be alien, unfamiliar. It could throw her off her game. She doubts that, but it’s probably prudent to at least account for the possibility. But till then, she’s going to enjoy toying with him ever so gently.


End file.
